Sunday, April 20, 2008

Using food as a weapon is as old as the siege but today's barbarians have upped the anté by several orders of magnitude.

"…There are only two possible ways in which a world of 10 billion people can be averted. Either the current birth rates must come down more quickly. Or the current death rates must go up. There is no other way. There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, war can accomplish it very quickly and decisively. Famine and disease are nature's ancient checks on population growth, and neither one has disappeared from the scene … To put it simply: Excessive population growth is the greatest single obstacle to the economic and social advancement of most of the societies in the developing world."

— Speech to the Club of Rome by Robert McNamara, Oct. 2, 1979

"Overpopulation and rapid demographic growth of Mexico is already today one of the major threats to the national security of the United States. Unless the U.S.-Mexico border is sealed, we will be up to our necks in Mexicans for whom we cannot find jobs."

—Robert McNamara, then World Bank president, March 19, 1982

McNamara's thinly veiled genocidal utterances took place over thirty years ago, echoing the wealthy and the privileged's fear of the 'great unwashed' when 'over-population' was the buzzword. So not much has changed has it, we're hearing the same, tired old messages being rolled out once again by the ruling elites and their spin doctors. McNamara's cries of fear about being up to his neck in Mexicans is exactly same as the current bogey doing the rounds in Europe, only now they're Africans.Thus the current explosions in Haiti, Eygpt, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, the Philippines, Indonesia and elsewhere over the rocketing price of basic foodstuffs such as cooking oil and rice prompted the BBC to describe them as first and foremost "a potential threat to Western security" (BBC News 24, 13 April, 2008), never mind the threat to human life, but then it reveals exactly where the BBC's head is at, protecting the status quo.

To add insult to injury, the crétin Gordon Brown has the damn nerve to say,

"Rising food prices threaten to roll back progress we have made in recent years on development. For the first time in decades, the number of people facing hunger is growing."

Progress? What planet does our glorious leader live on? Standards of living have been falling for everybody (except the rich who, as a consequence, have just gotten even richer by stealing even more from the poor), since the 1970s when the 'neo-liberal' agenda was initiated and not only have the poorest been the hardest hit but we've seen millions of the formerly 'middle classes' dumped unceremoniously back where they 'belong', with the poor. Social status doesn't put food on the table. So much for the capitalist 'good life'.

These are the facts: real wages in the US have fallen since the 1970s. It's reckoned that around 40 million Americans now live under the 'official' poverty level, but at least they can still eat something, not so the millions of people in the so-called developing world who, already immiserated by so-called free trade, have been hit with a double whammy, nay, a quintuple whammy.

Federal law enforcement agencies co-opted sheriffs offices as well state and local police forces in three states last weekend for a vast round up operation that one sheriff's deputy has described as "martial law training".

Law-enforcement agencies in Tennessee, Mississippi and Arkansas took part in what was described by local media as "an anti-crime and anti-terrorism initiative" involving officers from more than 50 federal, state and local agencies.

Given the military style name "Operation Sudden Impact", the initiative saw officers from six counties rounding up fugitives, conducting traffic checkpoints, climbing on boats on the Mississippi River and doing other "crime-abatement" programs all under the label of "anti-terrorism".

WREG Memphis news channel 3 reported that the Sheriff's Department arrested 332 people, 142 of whom were fugitives, or "terrorists" as they now seem to be known.

Hundreds of dollars were seized and drugs recovered, and 1,292 traffic violations were handed out to speeding terrorists and illegally parked terrorists.

The authorities even raided businesses and store owners, confiscating computers and paperwork in an effort to "track down possible terrorists before something big happens".

The Sheriff's Department is determining if and when they plan another round-up.

The operation, which involved police, deputies, the FBI, drug agents, gang units and even the coast guard, is just one example of how law enforcement at the state and local levels is being co-opted and centralized by the Department of Homeland Security via massive federal grants.

It also highlights how the distinction between crime and terrorism is becoming irrelevant.

An Infowars reader called in to the Alex Jones show yesterday to alert us to the story and explain that he had gleaned the information from a his friend, a sheriff's deputy in Memphis, who had described the operation as "training for martial law in America".

Forget innocent until proven guilty, you are now a terrorist suspect until you are told otherwise.

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Roots

Revelation 13

And I stood upon the sand of the sea, and saw a beast rise up out of the sea, having seven heads and ten horns, and upon his horns ten crowns, and upon his heads the name of blasphemy...

...And they worshipped the dragon which gave power unto the beast: and they worshipped the beast, saying, Who is like unto the beast? who is able to make war with him?...

Mark 13

And when ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars, be ye not troubled: for such things must needs be; but the end shall not be yet. For nation shall rise against nation, and kingdom against kingdom: and there shall be earthquakes in divers places, and there shall be famines and troubles: these are the beginnings of sorrows.